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7
“Why are you doing this to me?”
Indy huffed out a hot breath. It was sweltering in the hotel room, mostly because the windows didn’t open and Ice had turned off the air-conditioning the moment they’d walked in.
Beads of sweat rolled down Indy’s forehead. It had been a rough day, and she was drained. Her throat was dry from dehydration, the thirst making her gut clench. She whooshed out another breath and glared at the new set of plastic ties binding her wrists together. Then she glared at Ice, who was coolly unpacking his duffel, which appeared to contain an inordinate number of neatly folded black tee shirts and black cargo pants and black boxer-briefs and black socks.
And, oh yes, black sunglasses.
“You havegotto be kidding,” Indy blurted out when Ice put on a fresh set of black-tinted Wayfarers and shot a harsh look at her, like he was still pissed that she’d snapped his other pair in two and tossed it out the taxi window. “It’s nine at night and we’re in a hotel room with the curtains drawn shut.”
Ice stacked the last of his black tee shirts on the closet shelf, lined the stack flush against the wooden side of the open closet, then turned to her, gesturing with his head towards the overhead lights as he emerged from the open bedroom door of the rather fancy hotel suite.
“These LED lights are killer on the eyes.” Ice strolled past the tied-up Indy and yanked open the mini-bar fridge—which in fact was quite large, not a mini-fridge at all. “Oh, hey, you thirsty?”
He pulled out two chilled bottles of water, placed one on the sideboard beneath the TV, cracked open the other bottle, and glugged down the delicious-looking cold water as beads of moisture formed on the light blue plastic. He finished the first bottle, tossed the empty into the metal waste-basket, then grabbed the second bottle and proceeded to repeat the process until it was gone too.
“Man, that’s good,” he said after disposing of the tragically empty second bottle of spring water that made Indy yearn for the snow-capped mountains of the Himalayas, where ice-cold water was in glorious abundance and thirst was not a word, yearning was not a sensation, dehydration was not a leading cause of death.
“Um, I’d like one of those, please.” Indy pointed towards the fridge with a clumsy two-handed gesture because her wrists were bound together. “But don’t trouble yourself. I’ll get it.”
She stood from the hard-cushioned sofa and tried to make her way towards the fridge herself. It was slow going because of the second set of plastic ties binding her ankles together. The best she could manage was a sort of clumsy bunny-hop that made her vaguely grateful she didn’t have big boobs because she’d now have two black eyes.
Ice leaned against the sideboard, crossing his arms over his chest, those dark-hidden eyes watching her struggle like a pig in a poke. She’d just about gotten to the fridge when he pushed himself off the sideboard, strolled towards her, grabbed her by the scruff of her shirt, and tossed her back into the sofa.
Indy stumbled from the momentum, but Ice’s aim was true and she landed sideways on the sofa, nothing hurt but her sense of dignity.
She righted herself and sighed in his direction. “Really? You’re still playing this game of dominance and deprivation? What’s next, Chinese Water Torture?”
“You wish.” Ice lazily reached out his long right arm and pulled open the fridge door. He opened it all the way wide, displaying the alluring insides with racks full of chilled water and icy-cold beverages. He pulled out another bottle of water, placed it on the sideboard directly in front of her, then kicked the fridge-door shut with a sudden violence that made Indy jump.
Indy reddened, hating that Ice had made her jump like a scared rabbit. But she also couldn’t help admire his perfectly played game of contrast and contradiction, push and pull, gentleness and danger. His lazy movements lulled her. Then the sudden violent kick at the fridge-door triggered all her body’s alarm bells.
Every damn one of them.
He was playing her, and he was doing it so well she almost didn’t want it to stop.
But it had been hours since she’d had a drink. The stress and action of the day had drained her. The heat and humidity of the stuffy hotel room didn’t help.
Neither did this other kind of hotness.
This other kind of wetness.
“I thought you believed me.” Indy tried not to sound sulky, but she did her best to put just enough emotion in the words that it might get to him. “I’m being set up and you know it. It’s not right to tie me up and deprive me of basic human rights. You have a sense of justice. I know it. How is this fair?”
Ice said nothing. Instead he ran his finger along the side of the water-bottle, gathering up the beads of moisture rolling down the cold plastic.
Then he ambled over to her, that wet finger glistening under the overhead lights.
Indy stared in shocked silence as the big man stopped inches away from her body, his heavily muscled frame blocking out most of the light and all of the view.
Now all she could see was that thick finger dripping with wetness.
He held out his arm over her head, drawing her gaze up along with it like she was totally under his control. Indy’s tongue darted out and back. She licked her dry lips, stretched her neck back, opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue, shamelessly begging for a drop of that precious water.
Ice slowly inclined his finger down at her. A drop of the wetness rolled down to his fingertip, hanging on the edge but not dropping, just dangling there like a ripe cherry on a tree, a glistening pearl teetering on the edge of the known universe, its bulbous body catching the light and sending a glint of temptation Indy’s way.
The temptation wasn’t just thirst but something that had been building all day, from when he’d burst into that safe-house and brought Indy to her knees, from when her crotch was pressed tight against his muscled ass as the throbbing pistons of the motorcycle pumped between her warm legs, the four-stroke engine rumbled beneath her wet pussy.